Family Fun.

I just got back from Victory (the longest drive I’ve undertaken since the hospitalization), where I filled my old Victory growler with Almost Anton’s Lager and a new one I bought on the spot with ESB. The former is a Vienna Lager, one of my favorite styles and the latter is, well, one of my favorite styles.

It was pretty slow day in Downingtown. How slow? Even the inevitable Ruch was not in the house, although I assume he is by now. But I made good use of my loneliness, sampling the Bags Packed Porter, Weizen and Idyll Ale along with a small glass of the ESB. All three samples were, not unexpectedly, quite fine and the latter especially intriguing with its flowerly hops character. I’ll be back out for more of that soon.

The growlers are for tonight. Son Chris, wife Dr. Sarah and grandchild Regan are in town (soon, if not by now), staying at my daughter’s house and I’m going over to party and give my poor granddaughter, who’s coming up fast on her first birthday, some good grandfatherly input. It’s been six months since she’s have that invaluable source of wisdom.

And, yes, I am gonna see if this li’l girl is really as cute and happy as she seems in all the regular uploads Chris adds to my Cieva Photo Frame on a regular basis. This was a Christmas gift and is tres cool; I feel like I’m watching this child grow up right before my eyes even though she’s half a country away and the experience is much clearer than real life because the passage of time and changes in her are so clearly defined.

I also hit Wegman’s while in Downingtown and got us a big vat of Hummus, four different cheeses and two packets of crackers to add to tonight’s gustatory pleasures. And I’m adding a 12-pack of Sly Fox Phoenix Pale Ale to the beer mix. I am not, as they say, my father’s grandfather.

Something like that.

Then, tomorrow night, doing the Good Guy thing, I will babysit for Regan and my daughter’s four (Ryan, Jack, Michael and Kathryn) so my kids can take their mother, my ex-wife, out for dinner as a birthday celebration (all those internet rumors you’ve been hearing about somebody’s birthday happening about now might have be confused, just sayin’).

Before that, Chris and I will spent much of the day here in Liquid Diet Central installing a new OS/upgrade/fix to my computer. I think I’ve set the process up to be pretty simple, having spent this morning backing up all the essential data for programs like Word and Quicken, plus the websites, to USB cards and moving various invaluable programs and utilities which I use all the time to other partitions on the hard drive so they won’t be affected by the changes.

I hope.

All this means–try to bear up–a dearth of new posting here for somewhere between 24 and 48 hours.

Jack, sounded like a productive, postive day. Next time you do the Victory/Wegmans crawl, give me a ring.

I was informed that tomorrow, 11/11/08, that the Harvest Ale and Harvest Pils (both with made with fresh hops from NY) as well as the PA Harvest Ale (Vista Farms) will be available on draft again. The NY ale and pils rock!! See what you missed by not communicating!

Enjoy the babysitting gig tomorrow with the grand kids….it doesn’t get much better. Although 4 to 1 odds and a beer or two, I think the kids will win.

Well, you have to set up its internet connection and make some choices about how many photos, how long each stays on the screen and matters like that. If, as is my case, someone else is going to be uploading some or al the photos, you have to set them up with access to the account. Probably some other things I’ve forgotten, but once I was past an issue having to do with my router and my VOIP box which required buying and installing an adaptor, it was relatively simple.

If that’s what they did to your birthday, they must have wrapped your real age in one of those enigma things, then wrapped that in double-smoked bacon, stuffed it with gorgonzola, deep-fried it, and then buried it under a stack of blinis. How can we marvel at how great you look for your age if we don’t know what your age is?